328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Sean Carroll
4.7 ā¢ 4.7K Ratings
šļø 15 September 2025
ā±ļø 69 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Like any machine, bodies occasionally break down, and it's natural to go in search of a replacement part. Ancient societies featured simple prosthetics for teeth, noses, and limbs, while modern medicine pursues more advanced ways of replacing internal organs and microbiomes. But what is striking is not just the impressive ingenuity of our attempts to replicate human anatomy, but the surprising level of difficulty involved in doing it well. I talk with author Mary Roach about the many ways in which humans have chosen to replace bits of themselves, as told in her recent bookĀ Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/15/328-mary-roach-on-replacing-parts-of-our-bodies/
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Mary Roach received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University. Her books include multipleĀ New York TimesĀ bestsellers and have appeared on numerous best-of lists. She was a guest editor in theĀ Best American Science and Nature WritingĀ series, and received the Rushdie Award from the Harvard Secular Society.
Transcript
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| 1:43.4 | Hello, everyone, and welcome with the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. A few weeks ago, as I'm recording this, there was some kind of global summit. I'm fuzzy on the details. I didn't really do a lot of research for this intro. But the point is that there was a conversation between Vladimir Putin, who's the President of Russia, and Xi Jinping, who is the leader of China, |
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